Health economic analysis of a model for implementation of guidelines

Despite dissemination of evidence based guidelines for the prevention of chronic disease and management of obesity, evidence−practice gaps persist in general practice in the frequency of assessment and counselling about physical inactivity and diet.

The Preventive Evidence into Practice (PEP) study is a project funded by a NHMRC Partnership Project funding. The study aims to develop, trial and evaluate an evidence based implementation strategy for preventing chronic disease in general practice.

The study is a cluster randomised controlled trial in 30 general practices in four Medicare Locals – one each from SA, Victoria, NSW and Queensland. The protocol for this study has been published in Implementation Science.

The intervention practices received a practice-level intervention which included education and training of practice staff, resources to link practices with local community preventive programs, a medical record audit providing feedback to the practices as to the quality of their preventive care, and a series of facilitation visits to the practice by a trained facilitator.

The aim of the COMPaRE-PHC data linkage study is to identify any difference in service use between patients from the intervention and control groups in the PEP study and to compare the costs associated with the PEP intervention with any health benefits achieved in the trial.

Ethics and Medicare approval were obtained to link Medicare and PBS data with data from the PEP study. Data analysis is being finalised.